Leah May 16, 2011 at 11:49 am

Do I have to give up my e-mail so Marc can write back if he doesn’t like my comment? I already feel so much pressure being the first to write a comment.. Just wanted to say that I love the new site, I think it’s a great improvement. I look forward to feeling like I belong somewhere, and seeing other WTF-er comments.

Justin May 16, 2011 at 12:17 pm

Did I hear a little remix of the WTF theme.

BRENDA May 16, 2011 at 12:24 pm

Just put the cell phone in another room Marc. Geez.

Joe May 16, 2011 at 1:19 pm

Whether or not the stereotype is based on a little bit of truth, it’s always going to be hack.  Racial humor doesn’t offend me but easy jokes do.

James May 16, 2011 at 1:35 pm

Really? You got a traffic ticket that said all that? That was the most rational appeal taking grown-up responsibility that anyone will ever hear coming out of the California department of motor-vehicles. Fucked up.

Alexa May 16, 2011 at 7:37 pm

More goodness on Dane Cook.
Although I think Steve Byrne misinterpreted what Dane Cook meant when he was accused of stealing Dane’s essence.
I think by “essence” Dane was referring to his jism. And by jism I mean sperm.
I think Dane Cook is a super homophobe and developed a paranoia that people were coming into his hotel rooms while he was sleeping and taking his (sac) material.

Joe Tily May 17, 2011 at 2:40 am

Stylistic Decision! Fantastic rationalisation Marc - tell you what, i will go shoplifting and if i get caught i’ll tell ‘em i made a ‘stylistic decision’ to avoid paying. Marvelous.

Great show by the way . . . .

Ann May 17, 2011 at 8:11 am

Wow. Steve Byrne is a raging fucking racist. This is good to know. Now I can continue to ignore him.

Travis May 17, 2011 at 8:18 am

@Ann “Raging fucking racist”? You don’t have to like him, but just admit it, instead of making shit up. It makes you look like a cunt.

Joe Tily May 17, 2011 at 9:55 am

^^^ Wow - take away the ‘Your comment has been submitted for moderation’ element of the comments section and all hell breaks loose!!!! - very entertaining i must say . . . . .

RadioNed May 17, 2011 at 10:09 am

Fantastic interview, they just keep getting better!
For a second there I thought you had Dane in the room.

Great stuff !

JohnS May 17, 2011 at 2:16 pm

Nice .... stealing a bit from Adam Carolla’s book “In fifty years we’ll all be chicks” at the 29:16 mark of the podcast.

Joe B May 17, 2011 at 4:50 pm

I do not avoid Steve Byrne, Mandrake… but I do deny him my essence.

Paul May 17, 2011 at 4:57 pm

This is in response to that Travis guy calling the girl a cunt. I agree that Steve Byrne comes off like a racist in that interview. It’s one thing to say that every American should be fair game as far as being made fun of but the truth is that what he does is perpetuate false stereotypes.

He mentioned the thing about the security commercials and how only white people are in them as criminals. He said some vague (non) statistic about the amount of African Americans in prison. The truth is that prisons are still mostly filled with whites but blacks are disproportionately represented in prison. Also, white people commit far more crimes without getting sent to jail than blacks.

He also made an off color comment about Spanish getting taught in schools. The truth is that a large part of this country used to be Mexico and Spain before that. Also, our country is populated by a large Spanish speaking population. The rejection of our countries Hispanic identity and history is PURELY racist.

So Travis it seems that you look like a cunt because you are dumb and wrong

Travis May 17, 2011 at 5:24 pm

@Paul If you actually listened to the podcast, you would have heard him say that it would have been nice to see other ethnicities being portrayed within the commercial, instead of zeroing down on one ethnic group. And again, he delved into the hypocrisy of how most races are able to make fun of white people, yet, white people can’t do say shit back. It was a compare and contrast of “who can get away with what”, and the hypocrisy around it. It had nothing to do with being “racist”, even those ideas do come up, because, you know, that’s how most ideas are formed. In order to get a point across about a subject, while exposing it, you have to talk about it. Not that hard to understand.

So, trying to pawn off your statistics that aren’t even back up, means absolutely nothing, especially from someone who didn’t even understand the actual point of what he was getting at.

Steve Hatchett May 18, 2011 at 10:48 am

I didn’t know that there was such a thing as a heat seeking RPG. In fact, I don’t think there is one. It’s a rocket not a guided missile. Someone is blowing smoke up someone’s ass. Man, do I hate war stories.

ed May 18, 2011 at 2:22 pm

morons like ann and paul are the reason we can’t have an intelligent discussion about race in this country. they are both cunts

Sara May 18, 2011 at 3:41 pm

“morons like ann and paul are the reason we can’t have an intelligent discussion about race in this country. they are both cunts”

k…

saying someone is racist or are using racist rhetoric doesn’t make them a moron or a cunt. as a person of color i found what steve said in this podcast to be very racist and i appreciated marc’s responses to what steve said. it took the heat out of how offensive the words were and brought it back to the context of comedy and jokes.

steve obviously has major self-hatred for his own korean background. i definitely don’t think my 1/2 black side is “dirtying up” my white side.

with that said i found steve to be really interesting, loved the dane cook follow up story and will look up his stand up now. i may not agree with his views on racism in america but the guy was funny.

Admin May 18, 2011 at 6:15 pm

Folks-

Let’s leave the “moron” and “cunt” stuff on the TMZ comment pages.

We would like to keep this an open forum without excessive moderation, but we will rethink that philosophy very quickly if this kind of stuff continues.

That is all.

Gloria May 18, 2011 at 8:09 pm

Not sure I’d label Byrne an out-and-out racist, but he came off as intellectually shallow and self-hating.  To say that whites weren’t responsible for slavery because they got the slaves from warring tribes is just idiotic.  Yes, Africans engaged (and still engage) in slavery, but the institution of slavery in the West was far more brutal than any prior or subsequent form of involuntary servitude. 

As far as the need to mock everyone, there ARE comics who do it well—Jim Norton, Louis CK, Chris Rock.  The thing is, you can sense the humanity, the fundamental generosity of spirit that informs their comic presence.  With Steve, all you get is the “essence” of a blowhard.

But I did like his specials on Comedy Central.

Steve May 18, 2011 at 8:49 pm

But how are you even comparing him to a “blowhard”, without even hearing the joke? He was dissecting it, and even then, never got around to his entire point. He kinda just left it as it was, with an underline theme. I’m positive, if you heard a Louis CK bit that was 1/10th explained, with some crazy racial theme, that you would probably think the same. You haven’t even heard the joke in question, just something that he barely got into, nor explained.

Lionel Hutz, Esq. May 19, 2011 at 2:27 am

Think what you will of Steve and his racial humor, but Dane Cook comes off looking like a real paranoid shitheel.

paul May 19, 2011 at 2:59 am

@Travis- I did listen to the podcast that’s how I know that everything you brought up is just rewording what happened on the episode while I in the other hand read into the context of what what was being said and formed an argument based on said context. As for the statistics I “pawned off,” did you really expect some one to write footnotes on their discussion board post? Rather than challenging my statistics blindly, why don’t you look them up for yourself and maybe inform your self on the matter. If you did that you would probably cease your ignorant opinions. Maybe that’s too much to expect from you…

Travis May 19, 2011 at 9:10 am

@paul Ha, I did look up the statistics before I even responded to you, and every website I found, shows that what you said is completely wrong. And it shouldn’t matter, because that was never the point of it, although, you think it is, because that’s all you’re harping on.

Tobias May 19, 2011 at 10:27 am

Steve said white people are always being targeted in comedy.  Then later he says he’s been mistreated, mocked, etc for being asian, and never for being irish.  So he admits in the real world it’s his asianess that gets called out, yet he argues that in comedy white people are the primary victims.  I think a major reason it may seem that whites are fair game in comedy is that good comedy takes down the powerful (fires shots up the hierarchy rather than down) and white people have power and privilege in the USA and the world.  He says people don’t wanna talk about stereotypes or statistical inequality, but he implies that people don’t want to have this conversation cuz then we all have to admit that blacks are overrepresented in the prison pop. and the only logical conclusion is that black people have some sort of racial propensity for crime.  But this is not why these statistics are not discussed (if they aren’t).  The reason these realitites are not discussed is b/c they reflect persistent white racism and discrimination that has not been fully addressed or admitted.  Byrne posits that such things are not talked about cuz then we would all have to admit that black people are inherently criminal.  But the statistics actually show that white people get away with all kinds of criminal activity b/c enforcement is targeted toward powerless populations: the poor, and people of color.  Byrne doesn’t see power differences even when he is flying over an illeagaly occupied country in the death machine of a world power that is the greatest mass murdering force of the 21st century.  You have to drink deeply from the culture of white supremacy to not recognize these vast power differences and byrne revealed multiple times that he likes the taste.

evisruc May 19, 2011 at 3:03 pm

The effect of having white people play criminals in home security commercials: Nothing.

The effect of having black people play criminals in home security commercials: Reinforcement of negative stereotypes.

and I know he would like to point to disproportionate prison population, but that really has more to do with disproportionate poverty and culture of violence in inner cities. k.

I did a lot of sighing in this episode.

Here’s why it’s okay to make fun of white people: Because they still own the power structure (this does not mean every single individual white person is powerful but as a whole they have the benefits of being the ‘default’ race in this society) and humor is best when targeting power.

Katrina May 20, 2011 at 1:09 am

Steve Byrne is an idiot.

White people get made fun of because, in terms of power and influence, they’re still the boss.  You always make fun of the boss.  That Byrne’s apparently one of these people who can’t see that being made fun of in that context is, at least, passive acknowledgement of this fact, and that white people should be concerned not when it happens, but when it fucking stops, is the only thing that’s amusing about him from what I can tell.

paul May 20, 2011 at 3:54 am

@travis- I went back and read my original post and it seems that what I meant to type is not what I actually typed which is probably what caused the confusion. I meant to say that white people commit the most crimes by far in this country yet black people get sent to jail at a higher rate. I get lazy when writing things on these discussion boards because I expect nobody to read what I wrote. Anyway, my point was that Steve Byrne takes an uninformed stance on prisons.

Here is the fbi website that says that 70% of arrests are made on white people. http://www2.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2009/arrests/index.html
this still shows that his bit about white people being in security videos is wrong and racially uninformed. You can make the argument that 28% of the criminals in the commercials should be black but i’m willing to bet that more security systems are sold in suburbs where there is a higher percentage of white people and a higher percentage of white arrests.

loafward May 20, 2011 at 9:05 pm

hey. heard a good one this week.

for you german psychoanalysts out there, what comes between fear and sex?

foompf.

(actually ‘vier,’ ‘funf,’ and ‘sechs.’)

when the joke was put to me, i immediately answered, ‘my mother.’

loafward May 20, 2011 at 10:13 pm

why don’t irish-korean americans drink or do math?

because they have identity issues.

MM is my church May 22, 2011 at 4:53 pm

@Travis, so Steve Byrne is a raging racist and you appear to be a total a misogynist…..yeeha!

Anyway, as a half Asian half white woman I was appalled with Byrne’s comments re-race and humor.  His language is what I would often hear from “Twinkies”, to the extent that comments like his would be attributed to Uncle Chongs, the Asian version of Uncle Tom.

I am sorry if it seems I am being disrespectful toward Marc and his show.  I do not mean to be.  Marc Maron has personally pulled me out of serious depressive moods, his words have resonated with me deeply, and for that I owe him MUCH love and gratitude.

Steve May 23, 2011 at 3:04 pm

Steve Byrne did still Dane Cook’s essence…they both seem to be particularly unable to take themselves lightly.  Annoying sensitive posturing.  Bleh.  Maron, don’t waste your time on these cut-rate poseurs.

Travis May 26, 2011 at 4:36 pm

@Paul, if you don’t expect people to read what you wrote, than maybe you shouldn’t be addressing people by name? And I see what you’re saying now, but that’s not what Steve Byrne said, and is deviating farther from a solid point. Who cares if more white people are arrested, cause they should, because they are the majority here in the States. Blacks are the minority, and yet, we still over-populate the prison system. But I digress, because in all seriousness, this isn’t the point. The point, is that Steve Byrne is in no way coming off as a racist. Trust me, I’ve had all sorts of racial slurs thrown at me, and I also have some white friends who can joke around about my ethnicity, as well as I can joke around about there’s. There’s a huge distinction of when someone is a bigot, and Byrne doesn’t come off that way, at all. Sure, he is having a hard time explaining his bit, and it’s not fully fleshed out, but again, he’s not being racist. @Katrina, of course white people get made fun of more because of that, but that’s not the point. He is merely pointing out the hypocrisy within it, because that’s what comedians do. @MM is my church. Haha, what, from what I said to Ann? So anytime a women calls a guy a “dick”, they are a raging feminist? Please, I say that to both genders. I’m, by no means, a misogynist. A douche-bag, sure, but I happen to have full respect for both women and men…..unless they’re being a C***.

loafward May 27, 2011 at 12:18 am

this is planet kindergarten.

Katrina May 27, 2011 at 8:38 am

@TRavis:  It would be hypocritical if all the groups involved were coming from a position of equality, which they’re clearly not.  The type of humor that Byre is referring to really would simply result in unfunny hypocrisy if they were, but the power imbalance is the very thing that nullifies the potential hypocrisy.  Men, who still have more power and status than women, typically get made to look like incompetent dolts in most comedies, and children, who have the least amount of influence of all, usually are somehow the wisest, quickest, and possessors of the most common sense of any adult they encounter.  Mental giant and comedic genius that he is, this most typical of universally understood comedic tropes only seems to bother Byrne when the people engaging in it are not children or female, but brown.  I stand by belief that any group that gets bent about any form of comedy that constantly underscores they’re status as being at the top of the totem pole are equal parts misdirected and idiotic.  Again, the concern should occur when it stops, not when it happens.  As for whether Byrne is racist or not, based on how he’s presented himself here, I have to say that for me, he’s put himself in the catagory of “I’m not surprised” if definitive proof surfaced that he was (which, btw, I don’t *necessarily* believe this podcast is.)

Minkxx May 27, 2011 at 5:20 pm

This is the first time I’ve ever listened to a WTF episode and came away from it disliking some previously unknow comic. Most of the comics on this show leave me wanting to know more about their stuff and wanting to support them.

This guy . . .yeah, rot in obscurity, dude.

Minkxx May 27, 2011 at 6:56 pm

The thing is, there are white comics who “get away with” making fun of everyone. Louis CK comes to mind right away.

The reason a guy like Louis can talk shit about black people in a room full of black people is because there is something in his essence (ha!) that makes perfectly clear that he isn’t hiding some secret, whiny white man, we’re losing everything agenda behind his jokes. There’s an intangible quality that some comics just have that makes people comfortable laughing at racial jokes about themselves and other races. Clearly, Steve Byrne doesn’t have that intangible, but like all the other whiny, entitled blowhards in the world, he’d rather just complain that people won’t change so that he can look more great than to study dudes like Louis and learn how to actually be great.

As far as I can tell, Steve Byrne and Dane Cooke deserve each other. 

Jake May 30, 2011 at 12:41 pm

I’ve met steve byrnes personally when he was touring with a bunch of my friends (of all race black/asian/white/ME) and he kindly explained his racial jokes and stuff as it is just making fun of the stereotypes that are out there, to make people understand it is just stereotypes, he’s a comedian what do you expect? of course when a comedian start doing racial jokes you jump on the band-wagon saying hes a racist and bigot and what not, hell Mencia does jokes about mexicans all the time and guess what? he loves his race and so does steve byrnes, and as for Dane Cook, he’s a total douche, to be honest how the hell do you steal someones essence, dane cook saw steve as a threat to his career and wanted him gone, just like any other businessmen out there, when you see a up and coming company that becomes a threat to you, you try and get that place shut down. and also the reason any comic does racial jokes is just to get people to laugh at those things and not take it to heart, there are always someone in some race that take offense to these things and completely shut themselves from the joke and began to hate it, you just gotta grow up.

Casey June 01, 2011 at 9:10 pm

I @‘d Marc on Twitter saying I loved his response to Steve’s proposed points. It seems to be that Steve is trying to bring out this ‘Americanness’ that he identifies with..but his act seems to do the opposite (as he has represented here).To focus on stereotypes elucidates differences because stereotypes are exclusive to races. Making general jokes about being American would speak to his point.

Along with stereotypes, I think comedians forget what happens after the set. When the lights dim and the audience leaves, those jokes stick,esp if funny. As Steve himself said, he sees more black people on tv than in real life and I am sure that is true for many people. When you represent stereotypes as being ‘generally’ true, you leave the audience believing that. In addition, it is even further more detrimental because some stereotypes are intrinsic to the individual. White stereotypes as the nerdy up tight guy are not intrisic to white peoples’ character nor has any detrimental effect. Black people as lazy or as criminals is a statement that is intrisic to the person and extremely detrimental to their livelihood in the view of the audience you are speaking to, the audience that has 2% ability to see an example of a Black person of that.

Loved listening, I love these discussions and they are more fun to listen to in a conmedic forum.

Mandy Taylor June 02, 2011 at 11:41 am

If you’re mad about the lack of representation of black people in home security commercials, you need to get a life. but if you want to have a real discussion about the majority of prison populations being black and latino you should read more on the actual systematic racism that keeps those populations in prison. I think Steve can say “let’s just get over” slavery because he’s not part of that demographic; he probably sees himself as more white than asian; he thinks he’s not implicated. I think he needs to read more about race theory, so he can understand himself more. Being mixed-race myself I can relate to his confusion, but really there’s a whole discourse on this stuff and he just sounds ignorant. pick up a book, and take some responsibility, man

Kent August 09, 2011 at 10:30 am

ok lets stop pretending there are so many blacks in jail because of racisim, I live in toronto and whenever there is gun violence or stabbing you can bet it is in the jane and finch area an area well known for having a lot of black folk. Blacks are never gonna get anywhere until they take responsibilty for themselves and stop expecting they white man to do everything for them and blaming us for all there problems too.

I cant wait to see what crazy logic you people try and come up with next

camille August 20, 2011 at 11:56 pm

steve byrne: one of the few comics that makes me laugh out loud and has Never struck me as ripping off anyone .. go steve!

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